Research
by Zofie C. Field
Summary: This isn't the science she used to love.


**Research**

This wasn't the research you had expected when you signed on for this project. This isn't the science you used to know. This is life or death, and death is winning.

You've spent nearly every day in front of a microscope, nearly every day since you were sixteen and madly in love with science. When you started this experiment, you were prepared for science, prepared for long nights and hard work. But you weren't prepared for this – for research that borders on desperation, for the clawing ache of failure as lives slip through your fingers. You weren't prepared to be _in love_ with science like this, and to watch her fade away.

You have the answers, neatly packaged in a children's book. Neatly packaged and utterly indecipherable. It's been three weeks now, since Cosima found the book, three weeks of long days and longer nights. And still, nothing. You bring the book home to study after Cosima falls asleep. You stare the pages for hours and hours, rack your brain until your neurons are raw. And find no answers there. These days, your neurons know of nothing but Cosima.

Cosima, who sits at the lab bench next to you, thin, pumped full of oxygen her lungs don't care to accept, and still so calm. Still jazzed about the science. You can see the flicker of fear, the realization of her own immortality, but still she's humming to a beat in her head, still swinging her hips and shoulders as she prepares slides for the microscope.

And you're here, two feet away, whole and healthy but falling apart. She seems so alive, and you're barely living. The irony doesn't escape you.

Three weeks since she found the book, and the persistent tick of the oxygen tube against the lab bench as she sways to her inner beat reminds you constantly of time running out. Reminds you that you are losing, that you've already lost.

What would you give for extra time, for leniency from the hard deadline her genes have set? Some days you wonder how many people you would sacrifice just to save her. Ten? Ten thousand? Ten million?

And when you are unable to save her? When you've given everything, and it still isn't enough, what will you do?

You are supposed to love all of them, all of her sisters. You promised. But some days you're sure you will let the rest of them perish when Cosima is gone. That isn't fair, you know, but neither is losing Cosima.

The heart obeys no code of ethics.

In truth, though, you know you will trudge onward after Cosima has passed. You will work tirelessly until you've found the cure, your only distraction buried six feet under the dirt. You will save her sisters, because you promised. _You have to love all of us. _To you, they aren't her and never will be, but to her they are everything - kindred flesh and blood and soul. For her, you will trudge onward.

She wraps her arms around you and tells you to come home. But you can't come home. Home is for rest at the end of a successful day. There are no successful days here. There is only failure. There is only losing ground and falling behind.

You are weary, spiraling down and there is no light left within you.

And then a pair of pipettes appears in your peripheral vision, performing a Rockette-style kick line across the lab bench.

She's there beside you, where she always is, singing out loud to the song on the radio, feet tapping against the stool. She grins at you, bright canines, persistent hope, and the pipettes in her hands begin to do a jive in time with the music.

And even though she's pale, even though you can hear every labored breath, you smile. Then she's off her chair and tugging you into her arms for a dance, and you let her, though you could resist her frail pull without even trying. Dancing amongst the whirring machines, amid the slowly growing cells, she seems so alive (_you _seem so alive) and you almost forget she's nearly gone (and you are fading away with her). She's infectious, as always.

Finally, she relents and releases you back to your work. You collapse onto your stool and press your eyes to the microscope. You're still laughing, as you study the microscopic chemical parts of her two-stepping their way across the slide.

And something starts to flicker in the back of your mind.

Two days of later, in a maze of re-used tea bags and greasy pizza boxes full of discarded mushrooms and stale crusts, techno music blaring, you've solved it. Two days of sitting cross-legged next to her, brainstorming and loving science like you used to, you have a cure.

And in an elated rush you send up a prayer, to whatever god of science and love happens to be listening. _Please, don't let this be too late. _


End file.
